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Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

An international work program investigating the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being

"The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is an international work program designed to meet the needs of decision makers and the public for scientific information concerning the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and options for responding to those changes. The MA was launched by U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan in June 2001 and was completed in March 2005. It will help to meet assessment needs of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention to Combat Desertification, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Convention on Migratory Species, as well as needs of other users in the private sector and civil society. If the MA proves to be useful to its stakeholders, it is anticipated that such integrated assessments will be repeated every 5– 10 years and that ecosystem assessments will be regularly conducted at national or sub-national scales.

"The MA focuses on ecosystem services (the benefits people obtain from ecosystems), how changes in ecosystem services have affected human wellbeing, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and response options that might be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation. The specific issues being addressed by the assessment have been defined through consultation with the MA users. "The MA synthesizes information from the scientific literature, datasets, and scientific models, and includes knowledge held by the private sector, practitioners, local communities and indigenous peoples. All of the MA findings undergo rigorous peer review. More than 1,300 authors from 95 countries have been involved in four expert working groups preparing the global assessment, and hundreds more continue to undertake more than 20 sub-global assessments. The findings are contained in the fifteen reports listed in the box above. "The MA is an instrument to identify priorities for action. It provides tools for planning and management and foresight concerning the consequences of decisions affecting ecosystems. It helps identify response options to achieve human development and sustainability goals, and has helped build individual and institutional capacity to undertake integrated ecosystem assessments and to act on their findings." [from MA Overview]

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Sub-Topics
Ecosystem Management, Health (human), Sustainability
State(s)/Region(s)
International
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